What things in the world resonate with you and why?
Most straightforward-ly, this could just be URLs of related websites that you like. Could also be: books you return to, an exhibition you think about a lot, an object, an image.
What are their specificities?
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Audience questions
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Who are your readers?
What ideas do you want them to take away from your site?
What is your reader feeling?
What’s happening next for them?
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Strategy/Goals questions
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What’s motivating or enabling you to do this project now?
How will you know we’ve succeeded?
What are you worried about?
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Logistical questions
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What kind of scope, timeline, and budget are we working with?
(Sometimes people come to me with very specific numbers and dates in mind, and other times we have to map out everything else first — either approach works.)
What is so compelling about this pile of rocks that would inspire me to look at this picture so many times on any given day? (This is the "Monument to Finnish Sisu.")
Sisu is a word from the Finnish language that is “ekphrastically untranslatable*.”
It stands for a combination of resilience, determination, making a plan and sticking to it, and continuing on against the odds. Like "grit" or equanimity but — I love this part — with a “grimmer quality of stress management.”
* This means — I had to look this up — that there isn’t a word quite like sisu in the English language. (others: l’espirit d’escalier, o’jeitinho. I think there are many.)
